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Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

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Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#391

Post by dmbche »

alanh wrote: post #379
zeroq wrote: post #373

One of my "sales pitches" is "I can find answers online, I know kung-fu". I've been using internet since '98, and I somehow developed this elusive skill of knowing how to navigate all these ads, seo farms, paid content, murky websites, and getting straight to the answer, no matter what the question was. For a long time I didn't thought of that as a special power. I thought it was natural, like driving a car, or speak…

Right? Google is dog caca now. Myself and everyone I know keep getting sent to AI-written garbage nonsense slop websites, or for some reason, to the Hindustan Times

oddly this "caca" felt more visceral to me that most "poop"'s or "shit"'s I've seen in a bit. summoned an image instantly. probably just surprise - good choice!

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#392

Post by misswaterfairy »

inetknght wrote: post #103
freediver wrote: post #7

They still get away with it as ‘only’ 1% complain and Google thinks they don’t matter. We built our entire company for that 1%.

Kudos for Kagi. I stopped using Google and gladly pay Kagi for search to not show advertisements or junk. If Kagi ever starts showing ads to me, a paying customer, I'll ditch it too. If I get the feeling that Kagi is selling my search history, I'll ditch it too. Keep being awesome, Kagi CEO

This. Kagi is absolutely awesome.

I pay for Kagi so that I'm not being peddled ads or junk when I'm trying to be productive, as my ADHD-riddled brain can get easily distracted. It gets quite upsetting when I've wasted non-trivial amounts of time on those distractions that I subconsciously fall into.

I absolutely cannot use Google because of their seemingly endless attempts to distract me from what I'm searching for.

The final nail in the coffin was their actions to get rid of uBlock and other effective ad-blockers. It's a serious anti-pattern, and (I strongly argue) is effectively discrimination for those who struggle with ADHD.

I hope that Kagi can one day effectively filter out GenAI slop websites that look like legitimate content, but I can understand the significant technical challenges in such a feature.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#393

Post by eru »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #168
mattigames wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But like always they didn't stop once they were a bit profitable with a few ads, instead they got greedier and greedier and made their product worse once they captured most of the market, I have wonder if there can exist some variant of capitalism that punishes becoming a bit too greedy, like a soft ceiling (tied to the minimum wage) over which most of the profits go to taxes, and a hard one where all profits over th…

> instead they got greedier and greedier and made their product worse once they captured most of the market I wouldn't necessarily put it that way because not Google, nor any company, has moral capacity. They don't have souls. What they do have are incentive structures, and those flip when the stock goes public. Pre-IPO: the board is mostly founders and VCs holding paper wealth. Their shares aren't liquid, so the onl…

> Some theorists point out the obvious hack: take away the hot potato. Slow the game down. Make shares harder to flip, make earnings less frequent. If you could only trade stock once a year, you'd actually care what the company looks like in a year. If they only reported results annually, you'd be forced to think in years, not quarters.

Google's original founders still hold the majority of voting rights.

Making trading less efficient wouldn't change anything here.

> It's a tradeoff: you can have maximum liquidity and hyper-efficient capital markets, but then you get short-term brain damage. Or you can slow the game down, but then you're basically asking people to trust managers more and accept worse capital efficiency.

No, your proposal wouldn't work at all.

A big problem is actually that most managers in most companies mostly work for themselves. It's called a 'principal/agent problem'.

Exactly as you say 'execs get more room to bullshit.'

Btw, there's private equity funds with very long capital lock-ups. Their effects on companies typically aren't loved by the people who voice similar concerns to yours.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#394

Post by eru »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #329
marcus_holmes wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the old days, companies were valued on their expected dividend. Share prices didn't move that much, and trading shares took time and had fees attached. You could speculate on share price moves, and people did, but the primary source of income from holding shares was dividends. Now it's the other way around. The primary source of gains from owing shares is speculation on the share price. Dividends are mostly ignore…

While the importance of dividends has waned, we should still mention buybacks and liquidation. They still exist and buybacks especially are an important part of delivering shareholder value. Apple is a great example of returning about 4 times more in buybacks than dividends. How would you feel about tax-disadvantaging buybacks?

Buybacks and dividends are financially equivalent. They give money from the company to shareholders. The incentives are exactly the same for all parties involved, too.

Their only material difference is in taxes. Yes, I am in favour of putting dividends and buy backs on the same tax footing, just in the name of simplicity. And while you are at it, also put dividends and interest payments on the same tax footing.

At the moment, many jurisdictions advantage interest payments, thus encourage financing companies with debt instead of equity. And then they awkwardly pair it with other rules that try to tell companies (especially financial companies like banks) not to use so much debt, not to be so levered.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#395

Post by zeroq »

dmbche wrote: post #391
alanh wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? Google is dog caca now. Myself and everyone I know keep getting sent to AI-written garbage nonsense slop websites, or for some reason, to the Hindustan Times

oddly this "caca" felt more visceral to me that most "poop"'s or "shit"'s I've seen in a bit. summoned an image instantly. probably just surprise - good choice!

reminds me of a blackhat presentation of a web crawler

two young gentlemen introduced it as "caca", seemingly an acronym for sth, but they just couldn't help themselves and kept chuckling for next five minutes.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#396

Post by thwarted »

jsheard wrote: post #12

They do the same thing on the Play Store, for example I just searched for Firefox and the first result is a sponsored spot for Opera. Does Apple do that on the App Store? A funnier example: searching for Amazon gives Temu as the first result. Searching for Temu gives Shein as the first result. Searching for Shein gives Shein as the first result! ...but only because they outbid everyone else for the ad spot on their o…

I wonder how much this can end up contributing to the Kleenex-ification of a brand or a term. You search for firefox and random other browsers come up. Now browsers in general are associated with the firefox term. Of course, when it comes down to it, there isn't much difference between browsers anyway, the UI is different but they all need to work with the same websites, and people have been using specific application names in place of the type of data/work ("Excel file" being used to refer to a CSV).

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#397

Post by macNchz »

xyzelement wrote: post #332

If I may offer a devil's advocate perspective. I just googled Toyota Highlander (my car) and the ad in the search results is "please consider the Honda Pilot." Now it's unlikely that I am shopping for a midsized SUV and am not aware of the major competitors, but squinting that away for a second - if I am searching for a car I think I want and Google informs me of a perfectly viable alternative that might be cheaper o…

In my view a lot of this hinges on how well the results are identified as ads, and whether they’re vectors of fraud.

I’m not inherently opposed to ads that are relevant to a user’s search query, but I am opposed to watering down their visual differentiation until they look just like regular search results. Once upon a time Google put ads on a yellow background labelled “Ads”. Now they’re “Sponsored results” and they look mostly identical to the rest. This is simply not about providing interesting and relevant alternatives, but about tricking the user into clicking the ad so Google can charge the advertiser.

What I truly can’t abide, though, is the volume of fraudulent and malicious advertising circulating their network. Given Google’s $100 billion profit in 2024, the amount of fake/scam versions of real websites that they allow to appear in search ads, or deepfake Elon Musk bitcoin giveaways they allow in YouTube prerolls is a calculated choice, not an inability or lack of resources to prevent it. At the end of the day it would eat into their profit if they were to make it harder to post deceptive ads.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#398

Post by eru »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #386
kelseyfrog wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the importance of dividends has waned, we should still mention buybacks and liquidation. They still exist and buybacks especially are an important part of delivering shareholder value. Apple is a great example of returning about 4 times more in buybacks than dividends. How would you feel about tax-disadvantaging buybacks?

Good point, and good question. I like Cory Doctorow's take on this [0], that this is basically defrauding the shareholders. It used to be illegal, it probably should be illegal again. It's also unsustainable, in that you can only do this for so long before you've bought up all the open shares and there's so few remaining that your company is no longer effectively tradeable. I don't know where this practice leads, but…

How are buybacks defrauding anyone?

They just return money to shareholders. The only material difference with dividends is the tax treatment. Even all the incentives are the same.

> It's also unsustainable, in that you can only do this for so long before you've bought up all the open shares and there's so few remaining that your company is no longer effectively tradeable.

What makes you think so?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_split might blow your mind.

> To the extreme, we end up with all the large companies doing this becoming effectively private, owned by a small group of folks rich enough to keep their holdings while everyone else sells out during the buybacks. That's not good.

You can tell your broker to automatically re-invest dividends for you.

Similarly, if you just don't sell when there's a buyback, you own more of the company afterwards. No one is forced to sell.

Btw, most companies (including Apple and Google) keep issuing shares to employees. Buying back some of them in the open market is just an indirect roundabout way of essentially handing employees cash.

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#399

Post by eru »

stevage wrote: post #265
MountDoom wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The founders of the company still have a controlling stake in the business. External shareholders have little leverage. Going public gave Google a lot of nearly-free money to grow, and it's how you've gotten both Gmail and Google+. But more importantly, it allowed them to offer much higher total comp packages by issuing more stock on the go. I think they're prisoners of the stock market only insofar that if the stock…

>Going public gave Google a lot of nearly-free money to grow, and it's how you've gotten both Gmail Gmail launched in April 2004, and the company went public in August 2004, so what you said is not literally true. > and Google+ Thanks for the chuckle.

If they only had successful products, that would be a sign that they didn't innovate enough.

If you innovate manically, you get Google Wave and Google+ amongst good products.

(However, this doesn't work in the other direction: having a few duds doesn't prove that you are innovative.)

Re: Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image

#400

Post by oefrha »

homebrewer wrote: post #46
irrational wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just searched "Firefox" in the app store. The top result is Google Chrome with an Ad indicator (Google paid for higher placement). Second is Firefox.

Sometimes it's good to live in a region that no one cares about. I just searched for Firefox in the Android Play Store application, there were no ads, and the first result was Firefox. I also don't get any ads in American and UK podcasts for the same reason (except for those read by the host, but there are few of those and they're easy to ignore).

On iOS App Store at least, my observation is they just show you a random irrelevant ad at the top if there’s no one specifically bidding for the term. Well that’s my assumption for why I get irrelevant ads when I search for obscure terms. But maybe they don’t show an ad if there’s no bidder at all for garbage spots in ?
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